When penguins are forced to pander to people.
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In its original French, apparently,
La marche de l'empereur
didn't have Morgan Freeman narrating. But now it does; and it's darn close to traumatic to settle into the silence, let your gaze be absorbed by the cinematography's vast alien vistas of blue ice-and then be yanked cruelly back into America as Freeman's gravelly voice erupts in Dolby Surround Sound all around your head.
And that about sums up the entire problem with
March of the Penguins
, which puts forth an exceedingly sentimentalized version of the penguins' unwavering drive toward procreation, which in fact resembles the Baatan Death March except for the fact that at some point they apparently get to have sex (though the documentary turns suddenly coy when it comes to overt penguin shagging).
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In its favor,
March
proffers some eye-popping camerawork, like the tracking shot of an impossibly long line of migrating penguins, looking like extras from
The Ten Commandments
. Admittedly those dang penguins are entertaining to watch, their babies are devilishly cute and it really is moving when the male penguins, after all the effort they've put into procreation, nevertheless lose their eggs or fledglings to the bitter cold.
But then the narration has to go and inform us syrupily that their "loss is unbearable." If viewers believe that penguin parents are mourning these deaths, they're sorely deceived. No, the tragedy here is worse than that-it's the end of the genetic line for that particular pair. That's it, kaput; no survival for your DNA, my friend, unless you mated successfully in previous years and your offspring haven't been eaten by famished explorers.
Why ruin hard-won gorgeous camera work of Antarctic wildlife by hand-feeding us the Dr. Seuss interpretation? Presumably for the kids-but frankly it's even worse for children, merely socializing fuzzy thinking while neglecting real opportunities to impart complicated observations of other vertebrate species. Natural history is far more interesting as it is, unembellished by our interpretation-in all his visions of dancing brooms, Walt Disney couldn't have in a trillion celluloid frames come up with anything as hair-raising and fantastic as natural selection.
Finally, Freeman informs us solemnly, "They're not that different from us, really." The heck they aren't; no one I know would stand in driving snow for four months without food or water, hunched over a nearly frozen hunk of embryo. After about 10 minutes, any self-respecting hominid would be scratching its head and strategizing; after 10 more, we'd have ordered Chinese takeout and be troubleshooting the deliverables timeline on a whiteboard. Thanks for trying to make me feel better, Morgan, but no thanks; I'm happy with my cerebral cortex and opposable thumbs.
